India Uncut
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Monday, November 28, 2005
Another sunrise industry
I had linked a few weeks back to an excellent Subir Gokarn piece in which he had mentioned that the biggest sunrise industries were those that competed against the government, and made up for government deficiencies. Well, there's an excellent illustration of how government inadequacy can fuel private enterprise in this Reuters report:
Albanians are so sick of police doing nothing about the theft and hijacking of luxury cars that they've taken to setting up their own informal networks of hot-lines and roadblocks.And the car was recovered. Of course, this was just an informal network, but it is easy to see a business flourishing in this vacuum created by the incompetence of the police. As, indeed, in so many other areas. So if you're a budding entrepreneur, in Albania or India, you know where to look for opportunities.
When a big new Mercedes was stolen at gunpoint earlier this month from a Tirana parking lot, the lot owner immediately called in his friends from the capital and around the country instead of dialing the local police precinct.
Using mobile phones, three cars homed in on the late-model limousine from different directions while an unofficial road block was set up near the northern town of Lezhe.
